How to stop Verizon from anonymously tracking your iPhone usage

Verizon collects a ton of usage and behavioral data on their customers, anonymizes it and then leverages it for marketing and partner programs. If you just signed up with Verizon, say to get a new iPhone 5, you have 30 days to opt-out of the data collection. Bryan J Clark posted about it earlier on app.net:

@benbrooks thought you might like to do a PSA: new Verizon customers like us have 30 days to opt-out from them selling your web history and device location to marketers. They should go to www.vzw.com/myprivacy to fix it.

While Verizon is hardly the only company to engage in customer analytics, because they have access to your cell phone data, they have access to far more, and more personal data than almost any other company. If you're the kind of person who turns off Google web tracking and flips your Facebook privacy settings to maximum, you'll almost certainly want to kill Verizon's snooping as well.

You might also want to drop them and the government oversight organizations of your choice a little letter telling them any such data collection would be better offered as opt-in than hidden as opt-out.

Update: Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web dove into Verizon's privacy options. If you weren't encouraged to turn it all off, all now, read what he found and you will be.

I have been a Verizon customer for years and did not know this. I just went in and disabled al of the settings. I have been on my same plan for 4 years and was able to opt out so do not be discouraged by the 30 day deadline give it a shot and se what happens.

Weird...I got an email from AT&T this morning about this exact issue. the email was to explain everything and to give me the option to opt out. It seems that with AT&T, you can opt out at any time; there doesn't seem to be a time period.

I believe in marketing analytics but not if I am not being compensated. If you are getting money from a prospect and then generate data to generate more revenue, then why not compensate that prospect? Anyone that partakes in a focus group is compensated. This is what the wireless carriers are essentially doing is a focus group. Wireless carriers take advantage of their power too often.